


Spiels

by artvinsky



Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: Drabble Collection, Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-09-01
Updated: 2013-09-03
Packaged: 2017-12-25 06:41:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/949885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/artvinsky/pseuds/artvinsky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of different drabbles on many different things and of many different people. Each chapter will have a summary, ratings/warnings, and most often than not a pairing. Tags will be updated as I go along.</p><p>For Erin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Reverberations (Corvo/The Outsider, G)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [What Will We Do With A Drunken Drabble?](https://archiveofourown.org/works/545519) by [Smaragdina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smaragdina/pseuds/Smaragdina). 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Corvo/The Outsider, G. - On the notion of the Outsider having a heart.

You almost do not hear it. Men do not hear it. But you can feel it, the thrum in the air as you make the jump, a large gap between two crumbling pieces of rock. It beats deep, and your feel it down to your nerves, into your very core.

You can hear it if you focus enough.

_There._

It feels like the sea ebbing, like the dry earth cracking, and the calm within an eye of a storm. And it is constant; you can feel it rolling in between your fingertips, like static.

“Corvo, you’re distracted.”

You ask Him what it is. What that is that you hear, that you feel shaking your bones and that you feel dancing at your skin, making the hairs on the back of your neck stand on the end. You ask and He almost cracks a smile.

Almost.

You see the fascination instead in His eyes, it is almost like a cat watching a mouse carefully.

“That is me. What you hear is the beat of my heart, if you will.”

You ask nothing more, you say nothing more. The sound of it dominates the silence, and as you sit on the pale pavement and let your legs and your coat dangle over the edge, you just listen to it.

You could have sworn it speeds up. Feeling that sea shift faster, the dry earth hissing more to against the heat, and the rain pattering harder against the coat that covers your skin. The static at your fingers gather to sound. It feels like the arc pylons scattered around Dunwall’s streets.

You could have sworn it speeds up as He sits next to you.


	2. Thresholds (Daud, Emily, Corvo, G)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On Daud taking up the role of spymaster. Post Low Chaos. G

Corvo had come for him. It was months after the girl had risen to the throne and the city had welcomed her with open arms and eyes weeping with both tears and blood.

He knows Corvo’s footsteps even in the dark. Careful, weighted, unfaltering, so much like demeanour projected that the famed Lord Protector that the Isles has known all over.

When he turns around, he sees that Corvo does not have his mask with him. Though his hood is up, his weapons are not drawn and his hands are not even balled into fists that would be ready to take the first punch. His face is not so much sharp angles anymore, and he looks more like himself, healthier, stronger, less of an animal and more of a man, like he had been when Daud had first seen him up close, when he had done _the deed_ and Corvo’s mouth was twisted with in an aghast snarl. That was over a year ago.

Corvo’s voice is quiet. “She wants to speak to you.”

 _Why_ , he had asked and Corvo, in all his guileless honestly, had answered him.

The Empress, little Emily Kaldwin, now eleven years of age, had asked three questions concerning him.

 _Did you leave him alive?_ Daud remembers how Corvo had stalked towards him, blade taut in his fist, and the mask unforgiving in the noon time light of the Flooded District. He remembers Corvo’s marked hand gripping at his coat while his feet dangled over the edge of the ruined building of their hideout. He remembers looking into the eyes of that mask, through the gears and the lenses, and into the eyes of the man behind it, and asking for his judgement for everything that he’s done. The judgement was not what he expected.

 _Do you know if he’s still here?_ He still sees Corvo after everything that’s happened, in the streets of the city when her young Majesty walks with the people and listens to their pleas. The dark, unfaltering form of the Lord Protector follows her like a shadow and stands by her side like a weapon waiting to be drawn at any moment’s notice. Daud and his men have learnt to keep away and they slink back into the shadows when Corvo sees them watching.

 _Can you get your hands on him?_ He knows his men have concerns as to why they haven’t left this godforsaken cesspit after getting out barely unscathed after all those months ago. They linger and they remain, and Daud is surprised in the loyalty he’s instilled in his men when even after all this passivity and inaction, they still mean to stay and work with him. No man has left yet. Not since Lurk. There is not as much blood on their clothes as there had been months ago.

Corvo is patient and Daud sees no shift in his posture, no hands fiddling with coat hems or the pommel of his blade. The Lord Protector waits, eyes watching if not curiously as Daud takes up his weapons, gloves sliding over hands and arms, covering where he and Corvo share the same Mark.

The traipse to Dunwall Tower is quick, and Daud notices Corvo using the same path on the roofs that he and his men had taken on _that day_. The fastest, the most accessible, and the least overlapped with watchmen on patrol. Daud wonders if Corvo picked this apart, along with many other facets of him, when he had gotten the chance.

It is night and the little Empress is still awake when they arrive. She stands in that same spot her mother once stood but where Jessamine was regal and welcoming and kind, Daud sees a little girl whose eyes are coated in sleep and whose shoulders are covered with thick blankets, as though she had just gotten out bed almost. Daud lips thin to a line when she straightens up at the sight of them jumping between the roofs, and her posture shifts, the blankets she holds in her fists turn taut in her small hands.

She means business. Daud knows that demeanour all too well, having seen it in his clients and his victims a million times over before when coin had still passed through his hands in between favours of ransom and of blood. But he’s done with it. He wants to look upon it no more, least of all on the young Empress’ shoulders. But how could he ever think that Emily was incapable of it, considering everything that had happened?

Corvo stands sentinel by them, and his hands are clasped, right over left, flesh covering the Mark and breaths soft when he gestures towards Emily.

When the Empress talks, Daud listens. He can hear her trying to fill the shoes her mother had left behind for her to grow up in, and for this, Daud feels more regret.

“Daud. I want you to be my new spymaster.”

For a moment, Daud hears Jessamine in her voice, in the tone she had spoken in. He shakes the image of the late Empress’ blood from his hands. He can’t have this, not now. He can’t—

He sees Corvo observing them patiently, and his eyes asking him in silence _. “What are you going to do, Daud?”_

He wants to protest, to argue. To open his mouth to yell and shout at this little girl that she is _very wrong_ in coming to this decision. He doesn’t care that he would have made her cry or that Corvo would be on top of him with the sword to his throat because she is wrong to choose this. Her mother’s killer as the new spymaster? The Isles would have a fit.

He wants to argue because leading an empire is not a game that little children play, and it is not child’s play to elect the men whom she must keep closest, and to even consider the late Empress’ killer? But she’s not just a child anymore, no— he had made sure of that.

Daud asks what will happen if he were to decline and turn down her _offer_.

This is where he realises that Emily Kaldwin wants to be different from her mother.

“You and your Whalers will be publicly executed in front of everyone just like Corvo almost was. Then they’ll know what really happened.”

His fists clench and this is something Corvo sees. Immediately, Daud feels Corvo’s patient hands as vices on his shoulders forcing him on the ground, sending the dirt into the air and into his face.

 _Keep my men out of this, Empress. They weren’t the ones who killed your mother._ They weren’t the ones who felt her hands at their faces clawing away, theirs weren’t the hands that slapped her full in the face when she defended her daughter, or whose blade plunged into her stomach and saw her anger grow cold to shock.

He saved Emily. From that witch, Delilah. This is how she means to thank him?

The dust from the pavement smears his face when he attempts to look up at Emily and her blanketed shoulders. He can see her tears, and he knows that she sees the same as he did, from her eyes. He wouldn’t be surprised if Corvo remembers every detail either but his hands do not go any easier on him.

“Yeah, but they were _part_ of it. _You were part of it_.” Her voice wavers but does not break, and Corvo’s vice-like grip does not ease on his twisted arms behind his back to comfort her.

Daud supposes not, because this is the Empress and it is her decision alone. But Emily Kaldwin wants to be a different empress from her mother and he knows part of it is Corvo’s doing. Daud knows that the Lord Protector chose judgement over death with his targets. He knows because he is one of the many examples of it, the Outsider knows wherever those other bastards ended up, living lives more cruel than death.

“Corvo, let go of him.”

One command and result is immediate. Corvo removes his hand from Daud’s arm and helps him stand before returning to his post, standing sentinel like a statue. Emily’s lips are thinned to a line, out of childish impatience, because what else would it have been?

But Daud kneels before her.

_Fine. I’ll do it._

His knuckles are to the ground and his eyes are staring at the colourful stripes of her mismatched socks. He sees Corvo’s boot walking towards her, and he sees the Lord Protector’s sword, untarnished and clean, as the Empress cradles it carefully in her small arms. The air around his shoulders is shaky when she tries to lift it in her hands. The blade is over his left shoulder, then his right. Corvo then takes the sword back before any accidents happen and both Daud and Emily are glad for it.

“It’s official then, Daud. You’re my new spymaster.”

But she kneels in front of him and her tired eyes stare into his. Though she just wants to go back to bed and he can easily see this, she still brings her hands to cup his face, and her left hand is careful around his scar.

“You know, I won’t ever forgive you for what you did to my mom.”

He understands, because he knows he would not have forgiven himself so easily, even at all either.

 


	3. Ichor (Corvo, The Outsider, T)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Outsider is not pleased - T for graphic depictions of violence and gore.

He has known the anger of men, their rage, their distrust, their indifference, their spite. He has known the anger of men and all its variations. His first nation was kind to him but the taste of anger that’s burnt into him was of his father’s last words. He had spoken in volumes of pride and sadness to any bystander. But he’s known it to be disappointment. He’s never looked back, not on the ship bound for Dunwall, not now.

He has known the anger of men. But he lets his blade retaliate when he needs as it always has been, be it meant for him or for  _her_.

He has known the anger of men.

But it is nothing compared to the anger of a god.

Corvo has never seen the void so desaturated of life.

Suddenly, two burning hands clamp his skull.

His mask partially shatters and the sound of the metal plate and wiring crashing on the pavement fall deaf to his ears. He finds himself drowning and choking and sputtering on the sound of noise so much like the music from the Abbey’s devices.

He barely notices the sensation of blood coming from his eyes when he looks into the eyes of the Outsider. The nails that dig into his skin feel like knives, and the snarl that engulfs the leviathan’s mouth is black with ichor.

He wants to scream.

He wants to scream as he watches the ink of the god’s eyes seep through the skin around his eyes, and the pale skin of his cheeks bloomwith black. The merciless thrumming echoes from the mouth that’s disappeared into the darkness and Corvo just  _wants to take his blade and plunge it into the gut of the leviathan and just run_.

But his eyes see nothing but the black and it blinds him like the sun. His arms and legs feel like breaking water and crumbling stone.

The hands burn into his face and he feels them, clawing downwards, reaching and tearing into him, through the fabric of his coat and shirt and into his skin, into his stomach, crushing his lungs into wine. The scream that catches his voice melts into the blood that dribbles down his chin and he chokes and sputters on the blood on his throat—

It all passes as quickly as it happens.

Then, he is crumpled in a heap on the pavement, his eyes taking in the mass of cracked metal plating and wires and his own blood on the white cobblestones. Then the unforgiving droning gives way to the sound of soft footsteps squeaking lightly on the ground. When he looks up from the debris, he sees the Outsider looking down on him with an astute sneer to his lip.

The god’s boot nudges him.

“Come. Find me.”

Then He disappears into smoke and his mask is as good as new and free of blood.

And so he pushes himself off the ground, wiping the blood from his face with his sleeve with one hand and feeling the mask’s weight in the other. The Void seems endless yet again, teeming with energy and light and time and possibility but Corvo knows where to begin. He follows where the Mark burns.

He has known the anger of men.

But it is dust compared to the wrath of a god.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by FrizzoftheBee's [drawing](http://frizzofthebee.tumblr.com/post/40860222808/corvo-has-never-seen-the-void-so-desaturated-of) of the Outsider snarling at poor Corvo.


End file.
